City seeks Global Entry

Updated 8:59 pm, Friday, March 2, 2012

The next time San Antonian Marco Barros flies back to a U.S. airport from a foreign trip, he will be able to execute several quick functions at a kiosk and walk right past the travelers waiting in long lines for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to inspect passports and collect customs declaration forms.

Barros has been accepted into the Global Entry program, a pre-approval program that allows international travelers to exit U.S. airports in just minutes.

There's only one problem. He can only do this if he returns to the United States at the international airports in Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth or about 20 other U.S. airports that have the kiosks.

But Barros, president and CEO of the San Antonio Area Tourism Council, is encouraging San Antonio business organizations to request that the network add San Antonio's airport.

With the number of airlines bringing passengers to San Antonio from Mexico expanding to five from one in a period of about seven months, the Global Entry program can make travel easier for the passengers who fly regularly between Mexico and San Antonio. If it's easier, more passengers will travel, helping support the routes to several additional Mexico cities.

U.S. travelers who fly frequently to international destinations and back understand the benefit of Global Entry. In Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth, numerous flights arrive within minutes of each other, unloading hundreds of passengers each into the customs inspections area.

The wait in line can be 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes 90 minutes, making some passengers miss connecting flights.

With Global Entry, passengers avoid waits by slipping their passport's barcode edge into a reader, placing their fingers for a fingerprint check and allowing a camera to scan their face.

Once approved, the kiosk prints a ticket for the participant, who then can collect luggage and hand the ticket to a CBP official on the way out of the customs area.

The Global Entry fee of $100 is good for five years.

Travelers can apply to Global Entry online at: www.globalentry.gov. Once the online application is approved, the applicant must submit to an interview with a CBP official. Barros went to Houston for his interview because San Antonio is not part of the network. The interview took just 10 minutes, he said.

CBP mainly confirms who the applicant is and where the applicant lives and works.

Barros said CBP may be willing to send an interviewer to San Antonio for a one-time appointment if 12 or more applicants are organized by a chamber of commerce to enter the program.

A CBP headquarters statement this week said no plans exist for expansion to San Antonio. “Further expansion of Global Entry will be based on an airport's international passenger volume and on needs of the service.”

San Antonio professionals, such as lawyers who travel to Mexico often and Mexican business owners who have second homes in San Antonio, are numerous enough to justify Global Entry in San Antonio, Barros said.

“All I want with this,” Barros said, “is to make our airport more accessible and convenient.”